Dear everyone,
There is a lot more news outside of our home than within it
this week. Russia invades Ukraine! I doubt this is too much of a surprise to anyone that has been
paying attention to Putin’s machinations over the last 20 years, but still - -
what can he be thinking? I don’t see how
this will end up being a good long term decision for him - - maybe he will be
dead (assassinated?) before the chickens come to roost. I’m sure the west will amply supply insurgent
forces. This could go on for a long
while. Anyway, I guess the convoy of truckers making their way to DC in protest
of something will have less to protest, although according to them, the
Ukrainian invasion is really a conspiracy to keep people’s attention away from
the convoy. Of course, the Russians didn’t
dare do something like this with super patriot carrot-head was in charge of
this country (because Our (former only because the election was stolen) Fearless
Leader would have aided and abetted Putin).
Meanwhile, Illinois is ending its mask mandate, which means
I can return to the gym. Maybe not right
away - - I caught my first cold in two years, and I still have a few days left
of my required three weeks of post-illness coughing to get rid of. Did you see recently that half of the free home
Covid testing kits are still unclaimed?
Anyway, with inflation, the precipitous withdrawal from
Afghanistan (which I think was actually a humanitarian benefit - - did we want
the war to go on forever? It just shows how idiotic our policies were there in
the first place), nominating “radical leftist” black female judges to the
Supreme Court, and the death of every sort of rational bill in Congress, it
looks pretty rocky for poor old Uncle Joe and the other 'radical leftists' of the
Democrat party. Except maybe for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
As some of you know, I was looking at a job. This was with an international company called
Cell Carta. They have offices in Antwerp, California,
China, and Naperville. The part of the
business in Naperville is a group that does contract work for pharma companies.
In short, there are an increasing number of cancer drugs on the market that are
tailored to act against specific genetic mutations found in cancer cells. The drugs don’t work unless that mutation is
present. A quick and inexpensive way of determining if you can use the drug is
to develop a colored antibody probe that binds to the mutation (i.e. immunoperoxidase). The lab at Naperville does two types of
testing. One is to test probes to see if
they properly label tissue to begin with, and the second is to test samples of
patient tumors prior to enrollment in a clinical trial for that particular new anti-cancer
drug. This work is a bit boring and
painstaking, but practically the same thing I have been doing for many years
now. Since the diagnosis has already
been made on the patient, there isn’t any liability issue, but your assessment of
the staining has to be very precise.
When I spoke to the recruiter about this job it seemed liked a pretty
low pressure job doing something worthwhile that would use my skills. The recruiter said it was a 4-day per week
job. However, there was a bit of a
bait-and-switch, because when I went to the Cell Carta offices, I was told that
it was a 5-day job, with 5 weeks of vacation.
I don’t need to work that badly; I don’t expect to take the job under
those conditions. I’m open to less pay
for less time, but I doubt there will be a counter offer. In any case, if I want to keep working for a
little bit longer, I have been told I can extend my half-time job at Christ for
a few more months, although where they will house me is a question, since the
office I use right now will be taken by a new full time pathologist July 1.
Not much is happening in Hinsdale. We are slowly starting to think about selling
this house (it is way too big for two people), but where will we go? I’m tired of Chicago weather; we missed a
hockey game a week ago because of a big snow storm (the Blackhawks played
miserably anyway). I am a little
disappointed with the handling of season ticket holders also - -there has been
low fan turnout over the last two years, and now they are offering deals like a
$50 or $150 ticket that includes two
beers (so, really, a $30 or $130 ticket).
Given that the season ticket holders had to pay either $80 or $250 for
the same seats without a beverage, and you can see my reluctance to buy a part
of a season ticket next year.
I have been reading as usual. I just finished Shteyngart’s Our
Country Friends. Funny as usual, but
I didn’t like the last 10%. You can pass
on another piece of non-fiction, Ten
Patterns that Explain the Universe - - no explanation of why those
particular ten patterns, and poor explanation of the patterns themselves. I
also read Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokartzuk’s The
Books of Jacob. This is pretty interesting
on a page by page basis (Jewish Jacob Frank is practically a Mormon Joseph
Smith in 18th century Ukraine), but it is super long, almost 1000
pages, and I was getting kind of tired by the end. I read an interesting
biography of W. G. Sebald, Speak,
Silence; I was unaware of how much of his novels were actually based on
true stories of his friends and acquaintances, and their experiences under the
Third Reich. . In keeping with these times of war, I read an account of the siege
of Stalingrad in
WW2 - - about a half-million dead on each side (plus maybe one million wounded)
over this 6 month long siege, and the beginning of the end of the Nazis. Woe to the Russians and Ukrainians if the
incursion ends in stalemate.
Love, H
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